The bedside clock said it was after nine when I woke the next morning, Friday, in the spare bedroom. I had told Nick I was having a bout of insomnia and wouldn’t want to disturb him – in truth, I just hadn’t wanted to spend the night in the same bed as him. I wouldn’t usually sleep nearly so late either, but recent events had left me exhausted. I heard voices downstairs. ‘Who was –’ I began, as the bedroom door opened. But it wasn’t Nick, as I had expected, standing there. It was Sanderson Morton, observing me. I was too taken aback to say anything.

‘Your husband has asked me to talk to you,’ he said. He was carrying a black leather bag.

‘Has he?’ was all I could reply.

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘He thinks that you may be having a difficult time right now.’ He walked over and sat on a stool in front of the dresser. ‘You recently suffered something very distressing.’ I couldn’t think what to say. ‘He told me you suffered a miscarriage. That must have been a terrible event for you.’

‘Yes,’ I whispered, knocked for six by the invasiveness, the directness.

He looked as if he were broaching a topic he found difficult himself. ‘Mrs Cawson – this can be quite a delicate subject – you know about shell shock, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘It comes from being in a very stressful situation. Essentially, your mind attunes to that level of stress. Then it can’t cope when you’re in a normal situation. You suffer panic, insomnia, general unhappiness. That sort of thing. This is something that Soviet doctors have recently discovered and passed the knowledge on to us. So, believe it or not, what you are going through now is something like shell shock.’ He opened the clasp on his bag with a click that seemed to ring off the walls.

‘What do you mean?’

He turned on a small electric lamp. ‘Lie back,’ he said. My nerves were stretched taut, but I did so and he peered in my eyes. ‘Look up,’ he said, pulling down my lower eyelid. ‘And now look down.’ He released me and timed my pulse. His fingers on my wrist were oily. I watched his face as the second hand whirred around the dial on his watch. ‘Do you think about it a lot?’

‘Yes,’ I said, truthfully.

‘I can give you something that will lift your mood, so you don’t dwell too much on it. From there, you can recover at your own pace. It’s healthier in the long run.’

‘I just want to deal with it myself.’

‘I understand. And that is to be commended. But sometimes we need help from our friends and family.’

‘Please just leave me alone.’